The Great Malfoy
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: It was the age of flappers and bootleggers and outrageous parties. She watched it all with eyes that were sad and lovely. He came back into her life, determined to relive the past. To everyone else, it was impossible. To them, it was a sad, beautiful, and tragic love affair. AH. 1920s. Harry's POV. HGDM. Taylor Swift song. Malfoy, meet Hermione. You knew her, five years ago.
1. (one)

**Author's Note: Happy birthday Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom! Neville has nothing to do with this fic, but Harry is the narrator.**

******Disclaimer: F Scott Fitzgerald and JKRowling are the literary sorcerers. Taylor Swift owns _Sad Beautiful Tragic_. Infringe any of them and I will not hesitate to _Avada Kedavra_ your sorry ass :)**

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The Great Malfoy  
1

Love is a funny thing. The way everyone describes love makes it seem like some sort of fantasy dream. But like with all perishable objects and dreams, love has an expiration date and is oft followed by death – death of the relationship, death of innocence, death of the emotional well-being of the heart.

Falling in love and being in love are two similar states of mind yet two completely different concepts – just like dying and death. One is the process; the other, the actual state of being. However, in the former you have optimistic ideals in hope for the future. The latter is merely a reflection of those same ideals but coloured with a cynical lens at a current state.

I've been turned off to the idea of love due to the tragedies I have witnessed in my life. My parents, barely out of their teenage years and terribly in love, died together in an automobile accident when I was a single year old. My aunt on my mother's side unwillingly became my guardian and raised me until I was old enough to be sent off to a boarding school. Aunt Petunia had her own son the same age as me, though, and felt no reason to show me any amorous affection that could be better spent doting on my pig of a cousin. At the all-boys' boarding school I attended since the age of eleven there were no females to become any sort of matronly figure in my life, and so I quickly learned muscle and crude humour got you farther in life than compassion and brains ever did.

Soon, I graduated from Smeltings, the boarding school I was at, and was off on my merry way to Oxford. It was there that I learned how to party all night and study through the process of osmosis with my head in my books. My fellow mates taught me the way to look classy – not trashy – and educated me on the finer points about girls. I played around a bit, broke a couple girls' hearts, and had a few too many drunken nights where I could not even remember my own name. Those little mishaps were all it took for me to sober up and focus back on my studies. Needless to say, my exposure to 'love' in University was not at all what my younger self had romanticised. So, like any other person who had gone through a traumatic experience, I swore off the trigger of the problem – in this case, girls.

Don't get me wrong, I personally had nothing against girls. Like any other hormonal straight man, they were attractive and fascinating to me. But they were also distracting and time/energy consuming. They made me into a wild man who was absolutely out of control. And I, for one, abhorred being out of control.

Then the Great War happened and my studies at Oxford were long forgotten as I left my books for ships. (Not relationships, mind you. Those ships had titanic sort of problems.) All of Europe was at war with one another. There were bombings and raids and so much rationing. Britain lived in a perpetual state of darkness lit by gunfire. I opted to join the war and soon I was suited up in a British Royal Navy uniform and off to live a fabulous life on a destroyer hugging the east coastline of Britain. It was there in the Navy did I learn that I was a man of the sea. I learned to thrive on the water and relished the open freedom of the ocean. After countless forays it became clear to me and my fellow shipmates I had an incurable hero complex and was a stickler for rules that I inevitably ended up breaking and bending. Among them, I became known as Super Man Potter. For short, Superman.

America joined the Great War after a couple bleak years had passed and both sides were nearly at a stalemate. With America's alliance came new tactics and inside information. Suddenly the Central Powers no longer stood a chance. The war that tore the world apart was over and four years of my life were gone – just like that.

I returned back to Privet Drive, the place where I had resided before the war, only to find that my cousin had been drafted into the war as well but he hadn't made it out alive. His death only increased my aunt and uncle's bitterness towards me. They were completely and thoroughly devastated that their little Duddykins hadn't been able to survive yet a little nobody like me had (their words, not mine). Under my breath, I remarked that it was probably because the Army didn't coddle their soldiers and so Dudley most likely was the one to put a bullet in himself. I was joking, of course. My aunt didn't seem to find my comment very funny. I was kicked out onto the streets within the hour.

I took the Knight Bus from Little Whinging where Privet Drive was over to Oxford to further my studies a bit. Truth was, I wasn't quite prepared for life out of the Navy yet. Without a regimen or a captain or firstmate to call out orders, I was a bit of a wandering soul. So I went back to University and got a Master's degree in Macroeconomics so I could become a stock broker for The City in London. It was 1922 when I moved to a dingy little cottage on the East End of London on the east side of the Thames. It was right on the water yet in the poorer districts of London. You wouldn't think the neighbourhood to be poor though, considering the castle of a house bordering my property on the right.

Hogwarts, it was called, judging from the furtive whispers my gossiping neighbours informed me as they dumped loads of fruitcakes and houseplants on my front porch as guise for a housewarming gift when in reality all they wanted to do was give me the neighbourhood rumours. No one ever told me who owned Hogwarts. Or if they did, it was in passing and the owner's name wasn't anything peculiar that caught my attention. Curtains of ivy hung about the stone exterior, cloaking the mansion in green secrecy. A marble swimming pool was centred with a front view of the river and there were more than forty acres of gardens on the property.

Across the river were glittering white palaces that practically snowed money. It was the West End where the wealthy had tea and crumpets and the rest of Britain gazed upon jealously. My cousin once removed, Hermione, lived on the West End of London. She and her husband, Ron Weasley, a man I'd known at University, lived in the grandest villa right across from Hogwarts.

Her husband, among various physical feats, had been one of the most remarkable Keepers at Oxford in the university's history of Quidditch. He was a national figure of such for Britain's professional Hall of Fame for Quidditch players. In turn, he reached a peak performance at the age of twenty-one which caused every other achievement that followed to be downplayed in retrospect.

Why he and Hermione came down to London, no one knew. Perhaps they were tired of a life were university accomplishments shadowed their every actions. They spent a year in France just because, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played Quidditch and were rich together. Living in London was to be a permanent move, Hermione told me over the telephone, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I had no idea of her true motives yet I knew that Ron would forever be searching for another climax in his life that could equal or surpass the one he had achieved at the ripe old age of twenty-one.

And so, on a balmy warm summer evening I drove over to the West End to see two old friends whom I hardly knew at all. Their house was even more flashy and ostentatious than I could have possibly seen from my tiny snapshot of sight over from my back garden. They lived in a homey family-style mansion, painted an impeccable shade of white with brilliant scarlet trimming. French doors opened up from their mountain of stairs and revealed Ron Weasley, clad in his Quidditch uniform, bathed in sweat and golden sunshine streaming through a halo of clouds.

I noticed that he had transformed since his Oxford years. Now, he was a hard lean man with squinting eyes that bore through you and pulled out your innermost secrets to the forefront of your mind. Muscle rippled underneath all of his Quidditch gear, belying his strength and formidable power. Incredible and hulking, it was simple to imagine him to be the sort who lost his temper easily and frequently. It was a cruel body capable of many unspeakable things that Ron Weasley now possessed.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky baritone, added to the impression of constant vigilance and hostility he conveyed. "I've got a nice place here," he informed me, his eyes shifting about his property warily as if seeing it with new eyes and daring me to disagree.

Without letting me respond, he clapped a hand on my back and led me into his villa, not offering to give me a tour of the sprawling gardens and priceless views of the rich side of London. We walked through a hallway with high ceilings and gleaming marble floors. We came to a stop in a room of white with frothy gauze curtains fluttering about like butterflies lost in the clouds. The butterflies in question were two young women seated upon a pristine snowy sofa unsure when to alight upon the next flower for some sweet nothings. The breeze granting everything flight came from French windows surrounding the entire room. There was a sudden snap and I turned to see Ron ordering for the windows to be shut. When I glanced back at the women, they were floating back down to Earth, their heads pulled out of the clouds.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was a dainty little thing with ginger hair, long legs, and sharp angled features. She gave the haughty impression of always judging her surroundings – even though her eyes were closed – and restless peace. I was almost startled into apologising for intruding into her space and breathing her air.

The other girl, Hermione, sat up and turned towards Ron and me. With a charming little smile, she greeted me: "Harry, I'm paralysed with happiness." She then laughed as if she had said something particularly droll. Hermione held out a hand, reaching towards me. I stepped forward and took it with a smile. "This here is Ginny," she murmured toward me with an air of confidentiality. "She might be related to Ron. No one knows for sure, but I say the hair is a dead giveaway."

"Oh?" I remarked with polite interest and a cordial nod to Miss Ginny. Hermione nodded happily, still holding onto my hand and drawing me into her orbit where all that mattered was her approval. That was a way she had, making a person believe they were the sole reason her world spun on its axis and yet she was the one dictating every move in her game of chess.

Miss Ginny opened her eyes a fraction of a centimetre and regarded me coolly. She blinked her approval at me almost imperceptibly and then resumed her quiet contempt of everything that existed in her life.

I looked back at my cousin who began asking me all sorts of question in her floating, irresistible voice. It was the kind of voice that imagined nothing was more beautiful than love, that dreamt at night instead of slept, that danced across the sky and touched the stars. Her face was sad and lovely; sad, beautiful, and tragic in a bright but dimmed sort of way.

I told her of my recent Oxford years and my new degree. I related how a dozen people at the university sent their love to her and Ron through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. Tyres are painted black in mourning and the tears flow long and hard enough to completely fill up the Thames."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Ron. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly: "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's three years old. Haven't you seen her before?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's – "

Ron Weasley, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, still fruitlessly searching for that peak, came to a standstill and rested his hand on my shoulder. "What do you do, Harry?" he interjects, abruptly cutting Hermione off.

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

"Gringotts."

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively as if the name wasn't worthy of his time or attention.

This irked me. "You will," I promised tersely. "You will if you invest in a smart fashion and stay in London."

"Are you suggesting otherwise?" Ron asked suddenly, leaning into my face. "Oh, I'm staying in London, don't you worry. I'd be a Godric damned fool to live anywhere else."

"That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool," remarked Miss Ginny, her petals of eyelashes fluttering open to reveal blossoming irises. Her brow furrowed as if she were surprised to be voicing her thoughts aloud. Then, her brow smoothed out as she adopted her blank, slightly haughty expression of judgment. Her gaze fell upon me, singling me out among a desolate sky of fallen, dimmed stars. "You live on the East End. I know someone there," she said to me derisively.

"I don't know a single –"

"You must know Malfoy."

"Malfoy?" demanded Hermione. "What Malfoy?"

And then, suddenly, it was dinnertime and no more talks of this supposedly infamous Malfoy followed us to the table. We all said our grace with our hands intertwined and thanked God for new beginnings and reunions and whatever frivolous things a family made up of complete strangers said at dinnertime grace. But then, just as I was letting go of Hermione's hand, she snatched it away from mine, cradling it with a tender little pout falling upon her lips.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

Everyone at the table diverted their attention from the feast laid out before us to look at Hermione's pinkie finger on her left hand. The second knuckle was swollen and watercoloured in a Monet painting of abstract black and blue.

"You did it, Ron," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to, but you _did_ do it. That's what I get for marrying such a big brute of a man, a big incredible hulking man."

"I hate that word hulking," Ron objected with slight hint of a sneer. "Even in jest."

"Hulking," Hermione insisted.

Ron started a long tirade against the equality of humanity and how only the dominant race should be preserved and if they just so happened to be 'hulking' and superior, then so be it. He was cut off some two hours later when the telephone rang and the butler summoned Ron to answer it. Hermione utilised this interruption to whisper to me some more of the London gossip.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she smiled excitedly. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

Slowly, Hermione's glowing smile fell, a mirror image and echo of the sun fading down past the horizon in the French windows behind her. Murmurings seeped through the walls and cracks of the room, poisoning the air with their toxic connotations. Ron's voice could be heard consoling someone on the other end of the telephone. Hermione bit her lip, shook her head, and said, "Perhaps another time, Harry." She stood up and threw her napkin down on the table before exiting the room. "It was a pleasure to see you again." And then she was gone, the shadows of the night coming up to swallow her whole.

Miss Ginny and I shared a sort of furtive glance upon Hermione's departure. I opened my mouth to question her on the strange ongoing of the Weasleys but immediately Miss Ginny held up her hand and hissed: "Shh!" She leaned in towards the wall where Ron was pleading and arguing with the person on the telephone. She eavesdropped on their conversation unashamedly, keeping her hand up in my direction in the universal sign for STOP TALKING.

If I may say so myself, I am a bit obtuse and oblivious to social cues that are usually interpreted correctly by the rest of society. "This Mr Malfoy you spoke of in the parlour – does he perhaps live in that house named Hogwarts? If so, I believe he is my neighbo –"

"Be quiet. I want to hear what's going on," Miss Ginny interrupted me curtly.

"What's going on?" I repeated.

She shot me a dirty look. "Well I would know if you weren't – " She stopped in the middle of her sentence unexpectedly and her frown suddenly changed into a look of puzzlement. "Wait, so you don't know? I thought everybody knew."

I shook my head rather pathetically. Such were the woes of being new to town.

"Hmm." Miss Ginny eyed me critically. "Ron's got a woman in Bath."

"A woman . . . ?" I echoed, not understanding the dirty connotations with which she uttered the word. And then, my eyes widened as I comprehended the gravity of the situation.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinnertime. Don't you think?" Miss Ginny snorted at the other woman's lack of manners.

Ron and Hermione entered the room just then and Miss Ginny and I fell silent while the other two filled the room with their row. I couldn't understand how they functioned, though, each tense with the other, knowing each of them knew the other's secrets but pretending they didn't. It was stifling in the dining room, the air heavy with things unspoken. I had to excuse myself, breathe clean pure air that rolled in from the bank on the other side of the Thames from the East End of London. It was only then when I was outside on the balcony did I feel the noose loosen from my neck and the quiet chirping of crickets remedy the situation.

"Tragic, isn't it?" inquired Miss Ginny, gracing me with her uninvited company.

I smiled politely. "Pardon?"

"Marriage," Miss Ginny clarified. "Every girl dreams of it and ends up with a broken heart. They expect love and give it endlessly but receive nothing in return. Fools, we are, but it's the best thing a girl can be in this world."

"I wouldn't know."

Miss Ginny threw me a condescending look over her shoulder as she snubbed out her cigarette she'd been lightly smoking for her few minutes out on the balcony. "You're the lucky one, I suppose," she said faintly, her voice floating back to me like a lost sailboat in the Bermuda Triangle, desperately trying to navigate its way out of the snare. She left me out on the balcony and returned back into the vast and endless ocean of a mansion.

With my eyes, I followed the delicate sway of her hips as she left. An intriguing one, she was. I never knew what she was thinking and that thought simultaneously aroused my curiosity and raised my wariness. How could a person comfortably interact with another when their every action was a mystery?

Finding no more reprieve in the cool night air, I followed Miss Ginny back into the Weasley's villa. "Have a nice time out there, Harry?" Hermione asked me sincerely as I stepped foot back into the parlour where she and Ron and Miss Ginny were reclining. "I always find a little nip of the night breeze to waken my senses a little. Yes, I do swear by it. A little walk out along the Thames at night is certainly good for the soul. I always find a little – "

Ron gave me a cursory glance. "How do you like it here so far?" he interrupted her.

I glanced between the two with barely veiled curiousness but addressed Ron's question plainly. "It's homey."

Ron pursed his lips at that. "Don't believe everything you hear, Harry," he advised with a glare in Hermione's direction and a discreet glance at the silent telephone back near the dining hall.

I nodded in a reserved fashion, vowing to myself I would wait to reserve judgment on these characters. Miss Ginny took the moment to yawn quite loudly and rudely, filling up the cavernous silence with a gaping delicate yawn.

"My, it's late. I simply must be going. Goodnight, dears. Pleasure to meet you," she added, looking in my direction for a brief moment.

Hermione held up her hand and exclaimed: "Oh, but Ginny, darling, you mustn't! Not yet! The night is young and long."

Ginny smiled at her friend and said, "I best be off. Perhaps I will see you around, Mr Potter."

"Of course you will! Visit more frequently, darling, and I'll sort of – oh – fling you together. You know, lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat . . . that sort of thing," Hermione smiled coyly at Ginny and I.

She laughed at that. "Perhaps," she shrugged cryptically and then she left the mansion with nothing more than a shadow leaving with her to signal her departure.

"She's a nice girl," Ron said after a minute. "Respectable family, decent wealth. Fame suits her well."

I turned to him. "Fame?"

"Yes, didn't you know? Ginny Prewitt is all over the magazines these days," Hermione chimed in.

"Oh," was all I had to say. I knew she looked quite familiar. I just had not realised that the Ginny I had met was the same as the Ginny Prewitt, renowned youngest and most valuable Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies, which flew across the magazine stands.

We all sat there in silence that was not oppressive but not interesting by many standards. I had the distinct impression that Ron and Hermione did not know what to make of me. Though we were family by blood and marriage and the sort, if I had run into them on the roads, I am quite sure that we would not have shared a single word with each other. It was a bit of an eye-opener to realise people in your own family could be more of a stranger than the petrol manager you conversed with on a weekly basis when you drove up to get the petrol tank of your automobile filled up.

"I, er, have to go as well. Got to be up on time for work tomorrow," I excused myself lamely.

Thankfully, Ron and Hermione understood. They nodded their heads like they were some sort of bobble head figurines that were sold in those roadside souvenir shops. "Of course," they nodded.

"You'll come back if we invite you again?" Hermione asked with wide luminous eyes that shined brighter than the stars.

I told her I would and that seemed to pacify her for she let me leave the grounds of the Weasley property without further adieu. I chanced one last look in my mirrors as I crunched over their gravel driveway and saw two silhouettes shadowed in the glow of their porch light. If given a silhouette of another famous Quidditch star or well-kept social elite, I would not have been able to distinguish them from the Weasleys. It hurt my personal values a little to find a stranger indistinguishable from family.

When I came upon my own modest – and rather shabby – little cottage on the East End, I noticed Hogwarts was lit up bright like a fireworks show. It was rather curious since before now, I had detected no signs of life within its shadowed halls. A flicker of movement caught my eye; a shadow crept stealthily through the gloom of the night, following its owner who was walking down by the river.

There, on the docks part of the property pertaining to the back gardens of Hogwarts, was a person. Based on its posture – rather self-assured and masculine – I deduced him to be my neighbour, Mr Malfoy. I figured since his name had come up during dinner conversation, it would only be polite of me to introduce myself to him. However, he made a rather curious gesture that hinted at his desire to be solitary at the moment.

Moonlight bleached everything silver, and in this gleaming light, I swear I saw a halo of moonbeams descend upon the head of Mr Malfoy. He stretched out his arms toward the dark water of the Thames in a rather peculiar way as if he were reaching for someone, for something. He looked like an angel who had lost their wings and forgotten how to find the path back to the stairway to heaven. In that moment, I found myself empathising for this poor Mr Malfoy, this man who reached out into thin air, grasping for something that was clearly as unattainable or possible as catching smoke with your bare hands.

And then I saw it: out, clear straight across the Thames, on the property of the villa I had visited not a mere quarter of an hour ago, was a green light pulsing strong and bright with the steady staccato rhythm of a heartbeat.

When I looked back to where Mr Malfoy had stood, he had vanished and I was alone again in the secrets of the night.

It was not until that summer, the summer of 1922, did I learn that love, the topic I had most wanted to avoid in my life, was unpredictable. A person may put his heart under lock and key but that did not mean someone else was unable to steal it.

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**Author's Note: Howdy, darlings. I know that if you wanted to read _The Great Gatsby_ you would have chosen it over this silly little fic; however, I assure you that this story will not be a carbon copy of the original. Some of the quotes are directly taken from _Gatsby_ but that is only because they are essential to the story.**

**Tom Felton or Toby Hemingway would've been hot as Gatsby in the 2013 remake of the film.**

**"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy." - F Scott Fitzgerald**


	2. (two)

**Disclaimer: Gatsby and Potter aren't mine.**

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2

I slept fretfully for the first couple of nights in my rubbishly small cottage. Work at Gringotts proved to be not as glamorous as I had claimed to Ron the night I dined with the Weasleys and Ginny Prewitt. No one at the Gringotts bank trusted me with the money and chose to keep everything under lock and key – literally. I was a bond man but I felt as if I were truly Bond working on a special covert mission for MI6. Operation Let-Me-Do-My-Job, if you will. My co-workers were silent, scary, and secretive. And they were out for blood – one wrong transaction or a customer complaint and your ass was toasted and fired. They were like conniving little goblins, the way they hoarded the money at Gringotts. At least I had the comforting knowledge that my job was secure: it was 1922, the Great War was over, and since my co-workers selfishly stockpiled all of the work, there was nothing for me to mess up or to do besides twiddle my thumbs. Life was good.

But alas, all good things have a drawback. I was practically paid to be bored, unstressed, and sleepy at work with loads of free time. Because of this, I clocked all of my sleep hours at work during the day which left me wide awake at night. Insomnia started creeping up on me like the ivy over the stone castle walls of Hogwarts. Speaking of Hogwarts, my neighbour sure liked to keep the castle shining brighter than the sun even though other stars twinkled brightly against the black velvet of the sky at the same time. Seriously, Mr Malfoy ought to be considerate and take note of the time and perhaps realise his neighbours were attempting to sleep.

I never met the man during the few weeks that I had inhabited my cottage. (I found out from a neighbour that the place I was living in was called Godric's Hollow. Mind you, I did not know who this Godric bloke was or why he thought this was his hollow. The place was crammed full of rubbish and trinkets and all sorts of things I inherited during the purchase of the cottage.) But my sleepless nights illuminated Mr Malfoy always wanting whatever it was across the Thames, so clearly radiant in the beams of that ominous green light yet just out of Mr Malfoy's reach.

Ron rang me often, trying to catch up with a mate he knew a lifetime ago. He made such enticing offers such as playing a round of chess or Quidditch with him, that I was beside myself with dread and figuring out how many ways I could dismiss his requests that were thinly veiled demands. His patience was not a thing to be tried, a lesson I learned the hard way when he came a-knocking on my door one bright and early Saturday morning.

"Mate, I know you're in there. Open up."

"Er, hullo, Ron." I had the door open barely a half a decimetre, yet Ron barged his way into Godric's Hollow as if his ass were on fire.

"Alright. So, I have a proposition for you," he began hurriedly, face tense and shifting his weight from one foot to the other as if he were doing drills on a football field. Pale blue eyes darted from my face to the floor and then up to the ceiling, never seeming to make up their mind as to where they wanted to land on their seemingly endless flight.

"Alright," I agreed, drawing out the word slowly. "Out with it then, eh?"

Ron's face scrunched up and turned a charming puce colour. I surreptitiously took a few steps backwards in case he hurled a few projectile contents from his stomach.

"I need to go to Bath." His eyes squinted and he looked so ashamed of himself that I thought he must have made a grand mess of himself. I carefully scrutinised him but found no soiling on his part. If anything, his pale pallor was the only thing on him that looked like it had been bleached.

"Er, sure. But surely you could have gotten a bath in your own cottage, am I right?"

Puce shaded into purple. "How dare you – insinuating that I – the nerve you've got, Potter! – in front of my own wife – no propriety at all – what would she think? – low-class trash!"

To say in the least, I understood nothing of that save for the part where Ron insulted me. Oh my, that seems to have been the whole sentence fragment that he spoke.

"Er . . . ." is my eloquent response.

Ron stepped in front of me and pointed a finger directly in my face. "Now you listen, and you listen up good, Potter."

_How does one 'listen up good'?_ I asked myself about his atrociously poor grammer before realising I should pay attention before Ron's spit starts flying and his head begins to explode in such unconceivable anger at my ignorance.

"Here I was thinking you were one of the brighter ones around here, Potter," Ron continued on insulting me. How nice of him. He was definitely going to get a hand-written Christmas card from me this year. "If there is one thing you should know about me, it is that I love my wife very much and would do anything in this world to make her happy."

I arched an eyebrow sceptically at this declaration but of course, like the gentleman I was, allowed Ron to proceed on with his ramblings. My manners apparently had no effect on him – Ron carried on with such firm assertions that he hardly knew what to do with himself when words did cease to be spoken and I made no move to fill in the silence.

"Well?" he demanded with the grace of a frenzied bull.

"Hm."

Ron stared at me, mouth agape. "Is that all? I come in here –" "_Uninvited_," I muttered under my breath so as not to interrupt him as he worked himself up into this passionate agitated mess. " – nullify all those dim-witted gossipy rumours Hermione does seem to love, and all you give me is 'hm'?"

"Mhmm."

Ron spluttered at that. I thought he was beginning to speak a new language what with all those made-up words and grunts and incomprehensible sounds he was making. I could not fathom what sort of thoughts were flying through his mind. I was not so sure I _wanted_ to know what sort of thoughts were flying through his mind.

"You're coming with me to Bath," Ron remarked decisively and marched out of Godric's Hollow without a second look back. (I hope he meant that we were going to the city of Bath or else he was in for one hell of a conversation with me about the fact that I am a perfectly content and straight man.)

I stepped out on to the porch and regarded my neighbour casually. He was in a brown pin-striped suit with a maroon bow-tie speckled with the gold of a rich man who finds himself a penniless beggar. In short, it was a charmingly awful bowtie to regard with the eyes yet it fit Ron perfectly in every sense. Ron tossed an off-white hat on and impatiently revved the engine of his automobile of which he was already in the driver's seat of.

"C'mon, mate, we don't got all day," Ron yelled over his engine's roar.

I looked up to the sky and decided it was all clear. It was looking as if it were going to be a fine and beautiful day today. I grabbed my own hat from the peg inside the front door and placed it upon my head. Then I locked up Godric's Hollow and stepped into Ron's car.

"What's in Bath?" I thought to ask him some two hours later when the wind was whistling a merry tune through our hair.

Ron looked at in surprise. "Mate, there's something wrong with your head," he told me, a cigar perched jauntily in between his lips. "The light bulb is just not clicking on for you, eh?"

I laughed politely and enjoyed the green scenery of England countryside because Heaven only knows that that was the only thing I was enjoying on this joyride to Bath.

I've been to Bath once upon a time and though the little city is quaint and pleasant compared to the crowded bustling city of London, its small-town touristy allure did not do wonders to my curiosity or interest. The town was ancient with its main attractions being the cathedral and the Roman baths for which the city was named after. The architecture was typically Gothic and classically Roman with its swooping arches and spindling black spires. It was a beautiful place but reeked of common plebeians and not the filthy rich society I thought Ron to associate himself with.

It turns out that we were not going to go in to the heart of Bath: Ron swooped off on to a side street and revved his engine ostentatiously as we hurtled down endless kilometres of cobblestone streets. The man knew how to make a grand entrance; I had to give him that. Where he was taking us I had no clue for I was not one who possessed a morbidly curious and adventurous soul and had never veered to this part of Bath before. Based on the tears of lime trapped in a blanket of grey-ish black smog that decorated the front and sides of the buildings, I figured that this was the seedier part of town. Beggars lined the sides of the road, their faces turned upwards to the sun that was hidden and shadowed by reality. Ron and I were infinitely over-dressed compared to the company this part of Bath kept, and I desperately hoped we would not linger here much longer because the money and power we exuded would not do us any favours here.

Thankfully, Ron sped through this boulevard of broken dreams and we popped out back in to the sprawling green English countryside. Mind you, we were still in a rural poverty-stricken area, but it was nothing compared to where we had just been. Train tracks lined the left side of the road; to the right was a dirty unkempt river. Out-of-place and completely conspicuous was a weather-beaten billboard ahead with the face of a nameless stranger who peered judgingly at us with pale watery blue eyes that had seen better days. His visage strangely resembled that of a rat. He looked like a Peter.

"What's that billboard for?" I inquired.

Ron shrugged. "Hell if I know, mate. Some say the man up there was a political campaigner for the elections a few years back. Pettigrew, they call him. Said he was a slimy little git who could wheedle out your deepest, darkest secrets and then would sell them for your soul. Not literally, of course. Bloody rumours, always twisted out of proportion. You'd do well not to pay heed to any sort of gossip someone tells you," Ron said with a loaded glance in my direction. Somehow I got the feeling that we were no longer talking about Pettigrew.

Ron stopped his car alongside the edge of the road. The building that we had stopped at was a dingy little thing that housed only three shops, one of which was vacant. The middle shop was an all-night restaurant whose nights flickered on and off intermittently and was doused in a nice coating of grime. The last shop which was closest to us was a garage – _Repairs. _GEORGE B. BROWN. _Cars bought and sold. – _and I followed Ron inside with the eyes of Pettigrew hot on our backs and the proud city of Bath still visible in the background from the direction we had come from.

The interior of the garage was unremarkable and grease-stained. The only car visible was a dusty old blue Ford Angelica, wrecked considerably beyond repair. There was not a living soul in sight besides me and Ron, and suddenly occurred to me that the garage must be a blind that concealed flats and living quarters overhead. Suddenly the owner of this fine establishment made his grand debut, wiping his blackened hands on an equally grimy black rag. He was a redhead, freckled, sweaty, and portly. He seemed deflated and spiritless yet there was a mischievous twinkle in his light blue eyes that had me thinking that I might want to watch my back around him.

"Hello, Brown, old man," said Ron, slapping him forcefully on the shoulder. "How's business?"

"Can't complain," answered Brown unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?"

"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."

"Works pretty slow, don't he?"

"No, he doesn't," said Ron coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."

"I don't mean that," Brown hastened to correct himself. "I just meant . . . ." His voice faded off and Ron glanced impatiently around the garage with unimpressed eyes. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs and down clomped a woman in sky-high heels, heavy make-up, and a thick figure wrapped in a tight-fitting dress that stretched wide over her hips. She looked to be around Ron's and my age but had a rounded youthful face that made it hard to pinpoint exactly how old she was. She was incredibly curvy – quite the opposite from Hermione – and from Ron's blatant staring directed at her chest, I could see exactly why he had picked this woman to be his mistress.

She smiled brightly and bypassed her husband without a second glance to reach a demure hand out for Ron to shake. She bit her lip coyly and fluttered her spidery eyelashes at him. Her husband was too busy studying me and figuring out my relations to Ron to notice the flirtatious exchange between his wife and Ron.

"Get some chairs, George, so somebody can sit down," she directed her husband in a thin, girl-ish voice. Brown agreed immediately and scampered off in a hurry to hunt down the chairs she had requested.

"I want to see you tonight," Ron demanded as soon as Brown was out of earshot.

She smirked and played hard-to-get with Ron for a few moments. A distinct clanging of metal foldable chairs announced Mr Brown's imminent arrival and she immediately dropped her act. "All right," was her response. Then she and Ron settled on a rendezvous spot, and Ron and I were out of the garage before Brown had a chance to appear with the chairs.

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July and the summer heat beat down on us relentlessly.

"Terrible place, isn't it," said Ron, exchanging a frown with Pettigrew.

"Awful."

"It does her good to get away."

"Doesn't her husband object?"

"Brown? He thinks she goes to see her sister in Bristol. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

So Ron Weasley and his girl and I drove over to Bristol where apparently Ron had bought a flat for Mrs Brown. We rode up in the lift, and despite my protests to leave the two in privacy, they insisted that I stay and that they would only be just a moment before Mrs Brown would call up some neighbouring flatmates and her sister who was described as "very beautiful by people who ought to know".

The flat was on the top floor of the building and was composed of a small living room, a small dining room, a single small master bedroom (where Ron and Mrs Brown had disappeared off to for the time being), and a bathroom that could easily be mistaken for a closet. The whole place was crowded with things, but the living room was especially so since it was outfitted with overwhelming pieces of furniture that took up too much space. I sat on the couch and leafed through one of the many outdated magazines on the coffee table as I ignored the sounds coming from the bedroom and patiently waited for Ron and Mrs Brown to show their faces.

Just as Ron and Lavender (after our first shot of whiskey we had done when we first stepped into the flat, she had insisted she and I call each other by our first names) finally reappeared with faces flushed with pleasure, the doorbell rang announcing company on the other side of the flat-door.

Lavender's sister, Pansy, was a slender girl with calculating eyes and a dark, sweeping curtain of straight hair. She had calculating diamond eyes and a snooty aristocratic air about her even though she was dressed to the nines in faux fur and knock-off pearls. She carried herself with a self-assured confidence that made her beautiful despite the fact that her beauty wasn't one of the first things one noticed about her. Like her sister, Pansy seemed forced, unnatural, and like she was trying too hard to look like a respectable lady of upper-class society. One would have to be blind to see past their ruby lips and powdered faces to believe gallivanted around with those of West London – and even so, everyone could hear from their uncultured cockney English accents that Lavender and Pansy belonged with the lower social classes.

Mr Creevey was a pale energetic man from the flat below. He wasn't one for silence or awkward pauses since he always seemed to be babbling on about something. Despite this rambling habit, it seemed he preferred not to talk about himself. The only information I managed to glean from him was that he was a well-known and respectable photographer and that his wife was the one animatedly standing over in the corner of the living room telling anyone who would listen about her personal sob story. She briefly looked up when she heard Mr Creevey mention her name, paused in the middle of elaborating about a children's orphanage and stray puppies that she rescued once upon a time, and informed me proudly that her husband had photographed her a hundred and eighteen times since they had been married. Once I gave her a nod of acknowledgment she returned to her waiting, captive (and slightly teary) audience.

We all continued on in this fashion, making idle small talk with no substantial relevance. The only ones who had some sort of connection with everyone in the room were Ron and Lavender, but they were content to isolate themselves from us and make sappy eyes at each other.

"I like your dress," Mrs Creevey interrupted her own storytelling to compliment Lavender's newly donned attire, bought with the courtesy of Ron's money. Lavender arched a disdainful eyebrow at the praise for her scarlet rose-patterned tea-length dress but she wasn't a skilled enough actress to hide her smug flush of pleasure at the flattering remark.

"This old rag?" Lavender scoffed and brushed her lap to smooth out a few non-existent wrinkles that only she could see. "I just slip it on sometimes when I'm not trying to impress anybody special."

I believed I was the only person in the room who appeared to be slighted by her discourteous comment.

"But it looks good on you, if you know what I mean," Mrs Creevey persisted. "If Colin could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it."

All of our gazes turned to scrutinise Lavender who graced us with a ridiculous model pout. Mr Creevey studied her critically and tilted his head.

"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to do a candid, something not so forced. And I'd try to get a hold of all of that back hair. You are shedding uncontrollably."

"Oh, but she should leave her fur coat on!" exclaimed Mrs Creevey. "Never mind that it sheds so atrociously – the mink fur makes her look like a _dar_ling –"

Mr Creevey interrupted his wife with a pointed glare that clearly conveyed that he was the expert photographer out of all of us. We all looked back at Lavender who was busy adjusting her cleavage. Ron Weasley cleared his throat loudly, distracting us from his mistress' bountiful chest.

"You Creeveys have something to drink," he commanded. "You too, Potter. Lavender, be a good hostess and get some more ice and mineral water."

Lavender huffed but obliged Ron's demand. As she passed him on her way in to the kitchen, Ron conspicuously gave her bottom a loud smack. His nonverbal claim on her was apparent to Mr Creevey and I, the only two other males in the flat. I was sure that our eyes would not wander on to Mrs Brown's most noticeable assets again.

"I've done some nice things out on the Thames," Mr Creevey said, alleviating the awkward tension that had settled about the room with Lavender's departure.

Ron stared at Mr Creevey uncomprehendingly.

"Two of them we have framed in the foyer."

"Two what?" demanded Ron.

"Two studies. One of them I call _Thames – East_, and the other _Thames – West_."

Lavender's sister, Pansy, sat down beside me on the couch and crossed her legs at the ankles. She leaned towards me, enveloping me in a perfume cloud of pansies and narcissus'. "Do you live on the Thames, too?" she asked, batting her spidery black eyelashes at me.

"I live on the East bank of inner-city London." I subtly shifted closer to the armrest on my side farthest from her. She shifted along with me, much to my displeasure.

"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. It was at this _gor_geous castle of a house . . . I think the man who owns it is named Malfoy. Do you know him?"

"I live next door to him."

"Do you, now." It was not a question so I wasn't sure what to respond with besides a slow, honest blink. I hoped Pansy did not think I was batting _my_ eyelashes at her.

Mrs Creevey decided this was the perfect moment to add in her two cents' worth. "Supposedly Malfoy is a close relative of J. K. Rowling. That's where all his money comes from."

"Oh?" I said, arching a sceptical eyebrow.

Pansy nodded sagely and shivered delicately, using that as an excuse to huddle even closer to me. "I'm bloody terrified of Malfoy," she told me with wide-eyed innocence. "No one with that much money could have acquired it so quickly without blood on their hands."

This arresting information about my elusive neighbour was interrupted by Lavender's arrival with the sparkling waters Ron had ordered for her to find. She twirled about gaily and laughed a tinkling bell laugh as she set each beverage down with a flourish in front of the corresponding person.

"Lav, sweetheart, don't slosh the fucking drinks on the bloody carpet," Ron said.

"Won-won, darling, serve the damn drinks yourself you son of a bastard if you don't like the way I do it," she cooed back in a honeyed voice laced with poison.

Pansy leaned even closer to me to whisper vociferously in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."

I studied Ron and Lavender. Both had such demanding, abrasive personalities that I could understand why their marriages to their respective spouses were failing. However, I did not comprehend the logic of the two of them being together since their characters were too strong and similar. Love has a cruel, twisted sense of humour, I guess.

"If it were up to Ron and Lavender, they wouldn't be unfaithful and do all of this unholy sneaking around when they could be married to each other instead," Pansy continued. "You see, it's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Pureblood, and they don't believe in divorce."

Hermione was most certainly not a Pureblood, and I was rather astounded by how gullible this society must be to believe this obvious lie.

"When they do get married, they're going to Siberia to live for awhile until this whole scandal blows over." Pansy placed such emphasis and conviction on the word 'when' that I found myself nodding along to the idea of Ron's and Lavender's indefinite but imminent marriage.

"Siberia?" scoffed Mrs Creevey. "Australia is just as removed but far more hospitable. _I_ would know. Colin took me to Moscow and Melbourne for our honeymoon. It wasn't his most brilliant idea, though, because I spent most of our honeymoon sleeping off the jetlag in over-priced hotels." Mrs Creevey stuck her nose up in derision and disgust at the memory of her honeymoon.

"Oh, how exotic!" Lavender squealed, clapping her hands and completely oblivious to the foul air that tainted Mrs Creevey's words.

"Mm, yes," Mrs Creevey sniffed dubiously. "A crazy experience I could never forget no matter how hard I tried." Mr Creevey adopted an offended expression at this mention.

Lavender sighed despairingly, her whole manner dejected and regretful within a matter of minutes, a complete opposite of her excitement after hearing about Mrs Creevey's honeymoon. "The only time _I_ was ever crazy was when I married George. Worst mistake of my life." She nodded emphatically at this and the other two women in the flat simpered and tittered with pity at Lavender's predicament. I knew I should also offer a few words of sympathy but I had never been able to say something I did not truly mean, so I remained silent.

No one noticed my silence: Ron was perfectly content to keep drinks and spirits in full supply and Mrs Creevey had an endless supply of round-a-bout stories up her sleeve. Lavender fretted and whined about this and that; Pansy flirted and tried to act coy with provocative looks and sultry air-kisses. Mr Creevey was already passed out on the couch. I began to feel out-of-place and like a third-wheel, so I made an excuse that I should really head back to London before this day's sun set.

"Nonsense!" Ron bellowed heartily, cheeks flushed with spirits. He shoved a tumbler of firewhiskey in my face. "Drink up, mate, and forget all of your rubbish about staying sober."

"But the drive back –"

Ron waved me off. "Quidditch reflexes, mate," he attempted to assure me. "We'll be fine."

I eyed him dubiously but then Lavender got in my face and breathed nonsensical promises of YOLO and Pansy bobbed her head in agreement with a ludicrous chant of "You only live once; you only live once" which _really_ did not bolster my confidence in Ron's driving skills in the slightest. Lavender piped in that the reason she started this affair with Ron was because the thought "You can't live forever; you can't live forever" kept crossing through her mind when she first saw Ron and so she threw caution to the wind and jumped in headfirst, fearless. At least, I think that is what she told me. I kept taking long sips from my continuously refilled shot of firewhiskey to keep me from having to comment in this ridiculous conversation she and Pansy were trying to include me in.

Needless to say, Pansy and Lavender aren't the best influences in the world. (What's that catchphrase people are always tossing about whenever they get royally sloshed? Don't drive under the influence?)

It was half past ten – I blinked and suddenly the ticking hands had rearranged the face of my watch to read quarter 'til midnight. Mr Creevey had woken up and was out smoking a cigar on the balcony; jazz music played softly on the radio and the two sisters were dripping in glittering pearls and faux feather boas as they pouted and attempted to look like flappers; and Ron was sprawled lazily on the couch, watching Lavender with hooded eyes as he steadily sipped his firewhiskey.

"Hey, wasn't that bird of yours a flapper a few years back?" Pansy inquired in a seemingly sincere voice but her deceptively clouded blue eyes were lucid enough to indicate she knew exactly what fire she had started with her supposedly innocent question.

Lavender stopped twirling and frowned at her sister's words. Whirling towards Ron, she shoved her hands on her hips and scowled. "Wasn't she, Won-Won?" she screeched a tea kettle whistle. Dogs started barking rapidly a few doors down, drowning out the rest of her sentence. When my fuzzy brain and too-slow ears could tune Lavender in again, I heard: " – Hermione this, Hermione that! It's always got to be about – "

"Bloody hell, Lav, shut up!" Ron roared and stumbled to his feet so he could get in Lavender's face.

Her brown eyes were wide, breaths gaspy in her fluttering chest, and her face was that of a scorned woman but she did not retreat in her attack. "Hermione! Hermione! Hermione!" shouted Lavender. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Hermione! Herm –"

Quick as lightning, Ron struck. With a thunderous bellow of outrage, he reared back only to give Lavender a nasty shiner on her right eye. He then followed this up by splitting her bottom lip so that a bright, rosy hue blossomed across her lips in a gruesome smile of a joker whose punchline was so awful you wish you had never found it out.

There was a brief moment of startled silence before scolding voices, murmurs of comfort, insincere apologies, oblivious snoring, and a long keening pitiful wail of hurt punctuated the air. I would've imagined Lavender's heart to be the organ hit and not her lip based on the way blood was flowing from her wounds. Pansy and Mrs Creevey were tending to Lavender who was blubbering and bloodying everything she touched. Ron had slunk off somewhere, and Mr Creevey was still snoring away, passed out again on the couch. Something so practised and repetitious about this scene had me believing this wasn't the first time Ron's temper had gotten the best of him.

"Does this . . ." I gestured at the chaotic room, trashed by our drunken endeavours, and soiled by what had transpired within the last five minutes ". . . happen often?" I asked delicately.

Lavender started to sob harder.

Pansy stopped dabbing at her sister's eye and regarded me with a flat, level look. "Mr Potter." It was a curt tone in dismissal.

I nodded my head at her obvious message. "All right, then. I, er, best be leaving then. Good night – er, morning – ladies. Be safe."

No one in the flat bothered to sway me from departing this time unlike a few hours earlier when they all but begged me to stay. All were too focused on the crying, broken emotional mess of a once-proud girl. Her façade was shattered seemingly beyond repair.

Outside of the flat, Ron was waiting for me in his car as he idly smoked a cigar with a one-hand feel on the steering wheel. "She all right?" he asked in a light neutral voice, not meeting my eyes or apologising for his actions in the flat.

I was rather disgusted with him and his blind nonchalance. I did not feel any sort of obligation to report to him about Lavender's current condition but somehow I found myself mumbling, "Yeah, she'll live."

He grunted noncommittally in answer and then we were high-tailing our asses out of the city as fast as Ron's speedometer would allow him. Neither of us bothered to look back even though the moon spotlighted every flaw Ron tried to cover up in the darkness of the night.

When I had left Godric's Hollow this morning for this excursion to Bath, I was under the impression that it would be a cleansing little light-hearted daytrip. However, as we sped past Pettigrew and his judgmental eyes filled with secrets on our way out of Bath, I felt the dirtiest and most messed up I had ever been in my life.

* * *

**"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you." - F Scott Fitzgerald  
**


End file.
